---
title: "The Architecture of Manipulation: Why Privacy Matters"
date:  2018-04-05
category:  Essay
---

test The recent
[news](https://www.channel4.com/news/data-democracy-and-dirty-tricks-cambridge-analytica-uncovered-investigation-expose)
that Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based data-analytics and political advisory firm,
used data from upwards of 50-million Facebook users to psychologically profile
those people, and then present targeted advertising/propaganda to them in order
to sway the results of the 2016 American presidential election in favour of
Donald J. Trump, has been garnering a lot of attention.  But is it really that
surprising?

It is no longer particularly newsworthy that we are being tracked and profiled
when we use the internet.  It is well known that Facebook, Google, Amazon, and
Microsoft 
[collect enormous amounts of data on their
users](https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21721634-how-it-shaping-up-data-giving-rise-new-economy),
and that 
[ISPs collect and sell data about their
customers](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/04/04/isps-can-now-collect-and-sell-your-data-what-know-internet-privacy/100015356/).
There has been some push-back about these issues in various camps, such as the
excellent social and technical work done by the Electronic Frontier Foundation {see
[here](https://ssd.eff.org/) for an example}, and the 
rallying cries by [journalists like Glenn Greenwald of the
Guardian](https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters) and
whistle-blowers like 
[Edward Snowden](https://www.ted.com/talks/edward_snowden_here_s_how_we_take_back_the_internet),
attempting to raise the public consciousness of this issue.  The work these
folks are doing is critically important, but how much of an impact they are
having on the general public remains unclear {see
[here](http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/03/16/Americans-Privacy-Strategies-Post-Snowden/)
for an interesting survey}.  People continue to use all of these services,
handing over information about themselves to these tech giants.

So what is the problem?  Why should we care about the data we are emitting
through our online activities?  What's so great about privacy, anyway?

There are a number of reasons that [privacy is
important](http://whyprivacymatters.org/).  One of the most compelling, I would
argue, is that the more information that is available about you, the more easily
and effectively you can be manipulated and controlled.  If I know everything
about you, every trigger and desire and failing and delusion, I stand a pretty
good chance of being able to get you do to what I want you to do.  And if I have
access to your search history and a record of everything you've done on social media, I know an enormous amount about how you think, feel, and act.

Of course, I'm not motivated to try to manipulate you.  I don't even know who
you are (I don't track users to this site; you're welcome).  But there are
actors who are, in fact, interested in influencing your thoughts and behavior.
Again, this is not news.  It has always been the case.

What is worth remarking on, I would argue, is that in today's ["attention
economy"](https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/30/the-attention-economy-created-by-silicon-valley-is-bankrupting-us/),
we have become comfortable accepting that every time we use some online service
or product, any number of faceless entities will be silently watching us, and
that that is simply the price we pay to participate.  It's problematic enough
that we are being continually profiled for profit.  What I find more troubling
is that most of us don't seem to mind much.  Most everyone I talk to about this
seems to be aware that this is going on, but yet we continue to use these
services daily.  Most people that I know don't care enough about being
surveilled to stop using these products.

Technology has given us incredible potential for and self-directed and
community-focused development, but we have allowed it instead to become an
architecture of manipulation: a monstrous, unimaginably complex infrastructure
built to rob individuals of their autonomy and their humanity.

You may think I am exaggerating, tending histrionic or hyperbolic.  But I'm not
trying to convince you of the existence of a vast network of co-conspirators,
smoking cigars in dark rooms and plotting the enslavement of humanity.  I am
just pointing out what we all already know: whenever you use the internet, there
are countless entities who will be vying for your "attention" and trying to
influence your "preferences".  Advertising seems like the mostly benign,
commercial version of this, and pretends as though it's a bit bumbly, and that
it really quite sincerely wants to make you laugh and give you value for your
money.  But advertising is only the piece of this game that highlights itself,
that jumps up and down and says "look at me!".  The other pieces are more subtle
and more influential: "like" buttons, push notifications, status updates, reward
systems, loyalty programs, dating profiles, tailored search results,
personalized content.  These systems posture as the heartbeat of a connected
world, but co-localized in the psyche of a single person, they add up to an
intricate web of manipulations.

Most of us do not understand (or understand fully) the technology that we use,
which makes us easy targets.  Our continued ignorance benefits those who would
profit from profiling and manipulating us, and thus they are motivated to
maintain a protective veil of technological complexity.  Like with coin and card
magic, the trick is much more effective if you do not know how it works.  This
motivation of secrecy then raises an important question: whose responsibility is
it to ensure that individuals understand the bargain they are making when they
shop online, send email, or participate in social media?  Does it fall on the
state? The businesses providing services? The individual?

Education, law, and social policy have not kept pace with technology, so there
are different time lines in play.  Tech moves extremely fast, and its
progenitors are very intelligent.  Law and policy are bound by different customs
and constraints, and must be more careful and measured.  For the foreseeable
future, individuals will have to be their own advocates and guardians.

To some ears, this refrain is now a tired, broken record.  But so far, sunlight
has been not much of a disinfectant, and it is not clear what the right way
forward is.  The questions we need to address in these realms, individually and
socially, are difficult and urgent.

You can be your own best advocate and protector.  Try the difficult work of
tracking the trackers.  Continually ask: how many times each day is someone or
something trying to influence you?  Who is trying to control your mind?  How are
they doing it, and what do they want?

It is my hope that by thinking about and disucssing these issues we can course
correct.  That we will soon find our way to better systems that respect
individuals and support community building.  There is nothing about the nature
of these technologies that we have come to love and rely on that requires us to
sacrifice dignity for convenience.  Any company that asks you to make such a
trade does not deserve real estate inside your head.
